Playing According to Pink

I finished reading Daniel Pink's book several months ago, but for some reason it's been hard for me to get started with the blogging. I almost never post on facebook, and I haven't kept a journal for 20 years, so I just don't do much of that kind of writing. In regard to the book itself though, I thought it was very easy to read. The ideas and the way he communicates are easy for me to connect with. I found myself thinking "of course" a lot, and being glad those skills would be more valued than in the past, since I'm not an engineer or a lawyer. I connected with all six of the senses he talks about, but since music class is all about playing, I though I'd start there.

I have two nephews, one 9, and the other 6, and if I need a lesson in connecting through play, that's a great place for me to get it. My 6 year old nephew and I have spent hours building things with GeoTrax. It's probably more like me handing him pieces and saying "That looks cool!", but I think that's an important part of it for him. Doing it by himself all the time just isn't as much fun. He has just about every set of tracks, bridges and buildings that have been made, so the different design possibilities are pretty extensive. I can actually see him being an architect someday. His dad is a city planner, and what he really loves about his job is the design piece, so if those sorts of things are hereditary, I can see that in Evan. He's not ready for a drafting board or a copy of autocad just yet, but he is developing a skill that interests him through play, and for me he's a good teacher.

Sometimes 3rd grade feels a little young to start band. Learning to read music and make a good sound is serious business:) Many of them are not really big enough to manage a full-size instrument, and the instruments don't come in half and quarter sizes like strings. There also isn't, I don't think, a really good way to do rote teaching with band instruments to just "get them playing". It's not that you can't do it, but I don't think it accomplishes the same thing it does for strings. So much of what strings are learning at the beginning is about position and posture, all of which is visual. The students can learn what they need to know by watching the teacher, and the teacher can evaluate for correctness by watching the students. If it's a homogeneous class, which Suzuki-type classes usually are, they can play together because they are all doing the same thing, and a lot of it can actually be done using games. It's not that a band class can't be homogeneous, but even when it is, a lot of what goes on is not visual, and the fingerings are not always easy to communicate in words, or even to see and imitate. Trying to teach even a simple song without the visual cue of written music can be tedious; and if you add the complication of mixed transposing instruments that exists in a heterogeous class, it can be even more so.

All that said, I think learning to read music in the beginning is important. The kids would definitely love to just get the instruments out and play, in both senses of the word; but without being able to read music, I think most of them would lose interest because they wouldn't be able to do much with it except make a sound. Even to develop play by ear skills, which I think are important, you need a basic way to learn new notes and fingerings.

So, a goal for me for next year is to make learning to read music more of the "fun" part. Eight year olds don't necessarily do delayed gratification all that well, so one of the "play" pieces for me I hope will be related to learning to read. I learned this year that they really like to write on the board, something that I don't remember being as appealing to 6th graders. We spelled words with music notes, but for a long time I did the writing. Next year I will try having small marker boards, or even just laminated posterboard with a music staff so each student can do their own writing and not have to take turns at the big board. I read a book by Reggie Routman recently, and something she recommends in regular classroom teaching is making writing an important part of learning to read, rather letting it be something that comes later. I hope that by doing more music writing, and hopefully more activities that feel like games, the reading skills will develop more quickly, and the students will be more engaged with that part. I think if I pair that with playing the songflutes, it will feel more like play and "fun" to them, which is what I want. They like to move, they like variety, and they like to write, all of which can be incorporated in playing, in both senses of the word.